In many situations, a person, family, or institution may have a significant financial burden owing to a required or needed expenditure that exceeds their ability to pay. For example, the costs of a required or needed medical procedure, funeral expenses, college tuition or charitable costs may overburden or even threaten the solvency of a given person, family or institution.
In such situations, people, their families, and various institutions often need assistance paying various costs and expenses; however, the administrative difficulties or social obstacles associated with getting funds from a willing donor to the source of the costs (e.g., healthcare provider, college or university, or charity, etc.) often prevent willing donors from being able to help. For example, a caring person may wish to pay all or part of the funeral expenses of a neighbor, but fails to do so for lack of an efficient and/or confidential way of paying the expenses.
In the particular case of medical care, costs can be a significant financial burden on a patient and his/her family. Medical bills can drain a person's budget, his/her savings, and may lead to the person facing legal action or refusal of some physician services if the person is unable to pay the bills. While insurance and various assistance programs may ease some of the burden, many people may have to rely on financial support of friends and/or relatives. Currently, there is not a method in the marketplace for a hospital to receive a payment from a person other than a patient or the person(s) responsible for the patient's medical bills (i.e., guarantor).
Accordingly, there is a need for methods, systems, and computer readable media that allow a person or institution to communicate a need for assistance with bills associated with various types of expenses, and to allow for contributions to be applied directly to the owed accounts associated with a billing system accounts receivable system or department. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.